The traditional notion of watching television at home has evolved into many different forms of viewing television content, on many different devices. For example, users can watch television content, such as live television, recorded television, and time-shifted programs and movies, on various devices, such as televisions, display devices, entertainment devices, computers, and even mobile devices, such as tablets and mobile phones. Media content that is streamed or otherwise communicated to a client device, such as media content wirelessly communicated to a mobile phone, needs to be maintained as secure and encrypted.
Digital media can be transcoded and then streamed, moved, or otherwise communicated to a client device where the video/audio playback takes place. Digital media transcoders can transform the encoding of media content from one format to another so that other devices can more readily consume or render the content; for example, many current mobile phones are not able to render high-definition media content. Transcoding often takes tens of minutes or even hours, depending upon the type and the length of the content. The latency can become increasingly lengthy, and therefore unpleasant to the end user, if there are multiple content items to be transcoded.